TO IDENTIFY THE SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, OR EIGHTEENTH PRESIDENTIAD.[1]
Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?
What deepening twilight! Scum floating atop of the waters!
Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your
Arctic freezings!)
Are those really Congressmen? Are those the great Judges? Is that the
President?
Then I will sleep a while yet--for I see that these States sleep, for
reasons.
With gathering murk--with muttering thunder and lambent shoots, we all duly
awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will
surely awake.
[Footnote 1: These were the three Presidentships of Polk; of Taylor,]
succeeded by Fillmore; and of Pierce;--1845 to 1857.
